


Sam's Unexpected Birthday Gift From Jess

by allthebeautifulthings9828



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bobby Feels, Brother Feels, Caring Bobby, Dead Jessica, F/M, Feels, Forgiveness, Forgiving Sam, Ghost Jessica, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Heaven, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Jessica in Heaven, Love, Men of Letters Bunker, No Castiel, No Destiel, POV Sam, POV Sam Winchester, Romance, Sam Has Self-Worth Issues, Sam Has a Son, Sam Needs Forgiveness, Sam's Birthday, Sam-Centric, Soulmates, Supportive Bobby, Tragic Romance, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 02:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6734470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebeautifulthings9828/pseuds/allthebeautifulthings9828
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It barely occurred to Sam that it was May 2nd when he dragged himself to the bathroom for another day of hunting The Darkness. He turned 33 that day but had no desire to think about it. Before he knew it, he stood facing his past in the bathroom mirror. With Bobby's help, Jess manifested that morning on Sam's birthday to give him the most shocking news that turned out to be the greatest gift he could have ever received. Was it enough to keep him motivated for the uncertain future ahead?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sam's Unexpected Birthday Gift From Jess

Birthdays weren't readily acknowledged in the hunter world. Sam Winchester rolled out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom space he'd claimed for himself in the bunker and took a morning leak before it dawned on him that it was the second of May. Another year rolled by in his internal body clock. He was 33 now, which was old in many hunter circles.

Leaning over the sink, Sam began scrubbing his face with a soapy washcloth. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually celebrated his birthday or even Dean's birthday. It might have even approached a decade of unacknowledged birthdays if he thought about it deep enough. But he didn't want to think about it. He kept scrubbing his face in suspiciously compulsive motions to give himself some sort of distraction. Aching knee and shoulder joints early in the mornings reminded him that he had prematurely aged because of his lifestyle. As if hunting really was a lifestyle choice, he thought with a faint smirk. It was his life though. He reminded himself of the lives he'd saved over the years whenever it got too hard to continue. There was worth in saving lives even if it hadn't been the life of his own choosing early on.

And, no matter how old he got, Dean would always be older. That made it impossible for Dean to really make fun of his advancing age - a fact that was enormously satisfying.

A shower could wait, he decided. Dean wouldn't be up for another couple of hours if he had gone to bed at all and the silence in the bunker meant Sam had some free time. The small park in Lebanon popped into his mind. Going for a jog and clearing his mind sounded so appealing that morning that it made him smile into the towel as he dried off his face.

Sam squeezed a blob of toothpaste onto his toothbrush, thinking about the breakfast he'd pick up at the diner across the street from the park. Freezing air seeped into the bunker bathroom all at once. The temperature dropped enough for Sam's breath to puff from his mouth in faint clouds. He froze, looking over his shoulder, body suddenly wound tight and ready to go into combat. The bunker was supposed to be clear and blocked from all supernatural creatures that weren't invited.

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, even when Sam picked his way around the bathroom and out in the corridor searching for the culprit. As he turned back to the sink, the shock of the mirror reflection took a few seconds to register in his brain.

Cornsilk blonde hair curled in spirals. Beautiful light eyes highlighted a knowing smile.

Sam couldn't move. He stood there wielding a dripping toothbrush like a weapon at the ready against a woman he never expected to see again. The last time he'd seen her apparition was during the apocalypse when Lucifer disguised himself as that one crack in Sam's armor. With Lucifer freed from the cage again, Sam couldn't let himself trust the image smiling and tilting her head at him through the mirror.

"Jess?" His voice came out raspy and uncertain.

"Mh-hm," she affirmed with a nod. "Bobby showed me how."

"Bobby?" Though he started to grin, he wrestled his brain into speaking coherently again. "What are you doing here?"

"I've missed too many birthdays. When Bobby found me, I didn't know who he was but he knew so much about you that he must have been telling the truth. I've seen his Heaven. He's seen mine. We've bonded because we're both so proud of you, Sam."

Tears threatened and stung the inner rims of his eyes without materializing outwardly. Sam listened to the tinny, unearthly echo of her voice knowing it really was her after all. In the manifestations Lucifer had created, the creature hadn't managed to put the soul of the woman into her voice and he failed to place that small cluster of freckles over her left breast. Sam had forgotten those tiny details over the years, even forgetting her clean, faintly floral scent. It filled the bathroom though and he knew he'd never forget that lavender scent again.

"You know Bobby?" he murmured dumbly.

"Oh yeah. I like that red couch he has in front of the living room window. That's where he told me about how much good you've done - so much more than I ever knew when I was alive." No malice or reproach darkened her eyes the way he'd always imagined it would if he knew she'd been killed because of him. It almost knocked him to his knees but she began to speak again. "I understand now why there was a part of you I could never touch. I understand why I had to die. It was so millions of other innocent people could live."

Just a few words punched him in the chest, hitting square on the block of guilt he'd carried around for the whole of his adult life.

"So many people remember you and your brother as the men who rescued them from awful things. I'm so proud of you," Jess said in a thoughtful, soft voice.

"We're not who we used to be," Sam argued. "We used to save lives. Now it's like all we do is destroy things over and over again."

"You're working to get back to the heroes you are in your hearts and that counts in the long run. Understand me, honey. If you and your brother weren't fighting for the world, Heaven would have been destroyed for all of us here a long time ago. That means you've saved not only living people over and over again but those of us who are dead too."

There was something hidden between Jess' words - something pleading, something terrified. She never did think showing fear helped anything. It was better in her mind to push ahead and find solutions instead of sitting back and wallowing in anguish. That ambition and drive to keep going was a big reason why Sam fell for her. She was strong enough to be her own woman but she took pleasure in looking after him and encouraging him too. It hadn't appeared that anything changed in death.

Sam stepped closer to the bathroom mirror. "Are you in danger?"

"Not immediate danger," replied Jess, tipping her chin at a courageous angle. "Bobby and I decided to work together. There's another guy with a mullet and a brunette helping us too."

"Ash? Pam?" Those names hadn't touched his tongue in years. He allowed himself a smile.

"People called Ellen and Jo too," she said. "Nothing's happened yet but we all felt it when that blackness erupted on earth. We're not gonna sit around and wait to be vaporized."

Sam's stomach flip flopped. Did she know The Darkness was his and Dean's fault? She seemed to look at him so lovingly like he really was a knight on a white horse there to save the day. Her tune might change if she knew the whole truth. Suddenly he felt like he couldn't look her in the eye, yet he was afraid she'd disappear if he tore his eyes from her image. Being such a coward wasn't like him. He should just fess up.

"Baby." Teasing edged in on those two syllables. The corner of her mouth quirked upward just a bit. "Stop thinking so hard. Everything's gonna be okay."

"I don't know how to stop The Darkness," he whispered.

"Yes, you do," she replied in gentle confidence. "You just haven't found it in your brain yet but you will. I have faith in you."

Her faith permeated the room, not unlike the clean lavender scent of her skin. Sam huffed out a hard sigh and looked down as he shook his head at himself, unable to come to grips with what was happening. If she hadn't died, they might have been married for a decade by then and they might have even had a couple of children. Surely he'd have a law practice by that stage in his life too. A home. A real home, not a bunker in the ground. Instead, Jess was buried under six feet of rock and dirt while her ghost broke free from Heaven on his birthday to push him into continuing his fight to protect innocent lives in the universe. Not just Earth but it seemed Heaven was in danger too.

"Wanna see my Heaven?" she asked sweetly.

Sam considered the implications of saying yes to such a tempting offer. "Do I have to ... you know ... die?" It shook something in his heart to realize he was tempted to say yes to that too.

"No, no, nothing like that," Jess replied, her eyes twinkling with a smile. "Touch my fingers." She raised her hand and pressed it against her side of the mirror, awaiting him.

Sam moved toward her without hesitation, finally dropping the toothbrush in the sink. He expected to feel the warmth of her skin but he only felt cold glass when his enormous hand swallowed the shape of her delicate one. Disappointment barely had a second to take root before Jess' image closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A breeze kicked up on her end that he couldn't feel but it made her look like an ancient goddess in that white dress with her blonde curls billowing around her head.

"What's happening, Jess?"

She didn't acknowledge him. A loud pop drew his attention to a fresh crack in the upper right corner of the mirror. He almost withdrew his hand in a moment of fear but the edges of sunlight rippled in around Jess, holding his focus.

The image burst into a bright ray of sunlight. Sam jerked back, throwing his arm over his eyes to protect his vision. Light faded before he could ask what happened again. He squinted at the blurred shadowy shapes manifesting in the mirror and grew fearful when Jess didn't reappear. Gripping the frame of the mirror, he searched desperately for a blonde curl or even a simple flutter of her white dress. Nothing resembled her.

"Jess!" he barked, approaching full panic.

Gentle light bloomed from the center of the mirror the way old films began through a tube of light. He watched, transfixed. Rolling farmland came into view like a carpet of green unrolling toward the horizon. Off to the left stood an old barn clearly refurbished and painted red and white. To the right in the distance, a beautiful white farmhouse jutted up from a soft hill with a large porch wrapping around the ground floor. A hound with enormous drooping ears lazed near the porch steps, while a swing tied by rope to a tree branch swayed in the breeze and suggested at least one child lived there.

The screen door slammed shut and there came Jess striding toward the tree swing. A wiggling foot caught Sam's attention. She carried a small boy with dark hair on her hip and watching her slide the wriggling toddler into the swing clenched Sam's chest. A squeal echoed across the green earth toward Sam's ears where he stood in the bunker bathroom barely able to breathe because he wanted it so much. No, those were never things he truly thought he could have before but Jess made it seem so perfect and so much like ... Heaven.

"Jess?" he murmured.

"This is my Heaven," her disembodied voice said. "That's Kansas City's skyline off in the distance. Can you see it?"

"Yeah," Sam replied quietly. "I didn't know you wanted this."

"We never had time to evolve. This is where I believe we were headed. I don't want you to worry about me, sweetheart. I'm happy here."

Sam sighed a slow, long breath, dropping his eyes from the scene for just a moment. "I don't know how I'm making it without you. I'm just going day to day. Surviving. I'm not really living. Dean and I keep trying to make the world safer but it just feels like we're spinning our wheels in the mud."

"I know." Jess' voice almost became a tangible caress over his cheek. "You have so much life in you, Sam. Give life a chance. Let yourself experience all the things I can't anymore. There's love and happiness in your soul that shouldn't be wasted. Love will destroy the black evil." Her voice melted into his skin, into his internal makeup like an ethereal being just the way he imagined angels before he knew them. "We'll be here when it's your time."

Again, Sam experienced a strange echoing sensation as if Jess was telling him something between her words. The toddler kicked his legs as Jess pushed the swing, both laughing loud enough to make the porch dog lift his head in mild curiosity.

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Where'd the kid come from? Can you create people in Heaven?"

"Images of people can be created for atmosphere," replied Jess, clearly hedging the question for a moment, "but the boy is ours. When my life was taken, I had no clue I was pregnant but I was. There was no way to show you until Bobby found a way to move freely through our Heavens. He believes it'd give you the motivation to keep fighting and I think he's right."

The facts paraded through his mind at unbelievable speed. Sam let go of the mirror's frame and braced his hands on the rim of the sink for support. There had been a child. Jess had been pregnant when she was murdered in the same manner of his mother - all three because he'd been chosen by the demon Azazel. There were three lives destroyed by him, not just two now. For a moment, he hated Bobby for suggesting that Jess show him the child he never knew. He hated Jess for going along with it. Most of all, he hated himself because he never really entertained any paternal urges and instead devoted himself to the hunter life when he never intended to do that in the first place.

Sam never intended to be a hunter, yet he was. He never intended to be a father either, yet he was, even if his child was dead. It was too much.

"Sam, look at me."

He obeyed, raising his eyes to the mirror again. The place where Jess lived in Heaven faded away, leaving here standing there with the toddler boy on her hip. He wanted to avoid looking at what he missed in life but her eyes turned so commanding that he needed to do what she asked.

"You did nothing wrong."

"Jess--"

"You were just a baby. It began before you were even born if we're gonna tell the truth here. There was nothing you could've done to stop it. I know you're a Winchester now and that means you're gonna blame yourself for everything but my gift to you is this: we're okay and we're gonna be here when you come home. You have a job to do. Do you hear me? You and Dean have to stop this black evil we all felt here before it destroys everything. And you will. I know you will."

"You don't know that," he whispered.

"Of course I do. You've already done so much you thought was impossible. And when it's over, I want you to live. Get married and raise a family if you want those things. Travel. See the beauty in the world instead of the pain."

"Get married," Sam sputtered out in a burst of awful laughter. "How can I do that now?"

"Because love is a gift that should be given freely, not withheld."

That effectively silenced Sam because he knew Jess was right. She hadn't come on his birthday to ruin it by showing him everything he couldn't have with her. The gift she offered was so much bigger than manifesting through the bathroom mirror and letting him see her again. Jess offered him freedom through her forgiveness and hope through her encouragement that everything would be all right. She knew a dark piece of his soul had been punishing him for his entire life and denying him the right to enjoy life, to breathe the air around him, to accept and give love in any form.

They stared at each other through the mirror for a long moment. It might have even been several minutes of companionable silence as the toothpaste melted and liquified all over the sink basin. Sam was 33 that day but Jess looked like she hadn't aged at all. If their child had been born, he would be eleven going on twelve now. Instead, the boy with soft wispy brown hair lingered at just over a year old of Sam guessed correctly. His son was almost suspended in time awaiting his father's arrival.

"Are we ... are we soulmates?" he asked, suddenly putting together the rules of Heaven with her offer to join her in Heaven.

"Darlin', you've earned the right to enjoy Heaven the way you want."

It was a bit of a cryptic answer but Sam wasn't in the mood to nitpick. "I do want this," he said, voice breaking.

"You can have it," she said sweetly, "but you need to live your life first."

When Sam drew in a deep breath and let it go that time, so much tension released from his body when he did it. He traced the lines of her familiar face and her athletic figure with his eyes, desperately wishing he could touch her one more time.

"Sammy! Up and at 'em, you old fart!"

Jess grinned. "Your brother wants to make fun of your birthday."

With a subtle groan, Sam glanced over his shoulder and wondered if Dean would follow him to the bathroom.

"Let him, baby. It makes him happy."

Sam swung around to the mirror again. She gave an encouraging nod as she readjusted the toddler balanced on her hip.

"What'd you end up naming him?"

"Henry," she said with a knowing glint in her eye.

Eyebrows lifted high on his forehead, Sam's eyes darted from the boy to her face. "Did you meet my grandfather?"

"Yeah," she replied without further details. "Now go on. Dean's coming."

"I love you," Sam blurted.

"Oh baby, I love you too," replied Jess, eyes brimming with emotion. "Remember - live. Fight for all of the little Henrys in the world. And love yourself the way I love you."

"I promise."

But when Sam blinked back his tears, Jess was gone. Only his exhausted reflection and red-rimmed eyes looked back at him through that bathroom mirror. He couldn't move. He could barely breathe. Had the encounter really happened or was he finally losing his grip on reality? Sam pinched his own forearm in an attempt to kick himself out of a dream, which did nothing except bruise his skin.

Leave it to Bobby to find all of Heaven's loopholes in less than ten years. He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of a child in his arms that he'd have to wait years or maybe even decades to hold. Thinking of fatherhood brought Bobby to mind again, along with snatches of wild stories that always made Sam and Dean laugh whether they were true or not. Those were the moments that really stuck out in his childhood. People like Dean and Bobby were always heroes to Sam. They were larger than life, even after he bulked up and outgrew both of them.

He was a father.

Sam Winchester had a child.

Everything in him wanted to be that larger than life father for his son. He wanted to accumulate so many great stories that he'd always be little Henry's hero. That meant he had to keep going, to keep reaching for a life beyond The Darkness.

"There you are, birthday boy," said Dean sarcastically, appearing in the bathroom doorway. "Counting grey hairs in here? C'mon, get dressed. I'm starving. I wanna see how many waitresses I can get to sing Happy Birthday at the top of their lungs for you."

And Dean deserved life after The Darkness too.

Sam smiled. "Let's go."


End file.
